HD on an Infocus X1? (1 Viewer)

[RandyMcc]

I did do the search option and could not find anything specific to the infocus X1.

I have had my X1 for 2 years now and am still loving it! I am looking into getting a HD reciever (DTV) and upgrade my picture for my Xbox 360.

Is the X1 even capable of HD?

If so what is the propper way to hook it up.

 

[Philip Hamm]

You need an adapter that turns the VGA input into a component input. You can buy this adapter from infocus directly. The X1 will display a 1080i or 720p signal through analog component connection. The display does not have HD resolution, but is capable of displaying the picture at a lower resolution, which technically makes it an "EDTV". HD signals on the X1 look very good, noticably superior to DVD.

 

[Stevecatch]

This is kind of technical to explain, but I think I can do it if you bear with me here.

The Infocus X1 or X1a will do HD, however, because it is not a native HD projector, it will need to do some scaling of a picture, and you'll lose a reasonable amount of quality in doing so. Because the X1 is a SVGA 800 x 600 projector, it has a 4:3 aspect ratio, but HD content is presented in a 16:9 aspect ratio (widescreen), meaning that when you display a picture, it will have large black bars on the top and the bottom, or possibly have the edges cropped, losing something like 33% of the image, but that's an off-the-top-of-my-head estimation. Here's some photos I took from NASA's webpage that will better explain it.

The first one is what a native 720p picture would look like. (It's scaled down from 720p because 720p is really huge. 1280 x 720 pixels)
It's a nice 16:9 image:


Now, if we were to take that same image/video and put it on an infocus X1, it would scale to fit the image inside the X1's native resolution which is 800 x 600:


One other option that might be available is to full-screen the 16:9 image and lose the picture contained on each end of the image. Again, my rough estimation earlier was that 33% of the image is lost:



So yeah, there's how it will look. It's not too bad, really, but you do lose some quality. Also, the X1 does not have a component RCA input, so you'll have to get an adapter to go from Component RCA to VGA (a.k.a. D-sub 15; a.k.a VESA). The one from Infocus is on their site here. You can find generic ones that do the same thing from probably any of the resellers listed at the top of this forum.

 

[Philip Hamm]

The "Zoomed" example (picture 3) in Stevecatch's post is not a function that is available in the X1 itself (maybe the X1a), but a function of the HDTV decoder box. Make sure you set your HDTV decoder box to "4:3" mode.

Most HDTV broadcasts ont he major networks is compositioned for that 4:3 zoom mode, with the extra picture outside that zone containing only incidental stuff. This lets them do one production, and the zoomed 4:3 image is the one that goes out to all the regular stations. This is particularly easy to notice with sports, and easy to see in the on-screen graphics in sports presentations.

I often watch HD sports zoomed to take advantage of the full 800x600 resolution on my X1 in 4:3 mode, and it works excellent.

 

[Jim Mcc]

Randy, you will very happy with your X1 and HD signals. It is noticeably better than DVD, but not quite as good as true HD(of course). I have Dish Network HD and HD thru my OTA antenna and it looks great. After you hook up HD to your X1, you need to make sure your X1's firmware is the latest(4.3 version). If not, the X1 will lose sync with the HD signal and image will disappear.